It isn’t what you want that matters. Is it what they want?

Unlike what she says, it not what you measure that matters. [It does, but there is something else, which is important.]

What matters is, whether people in your eco-system – your sales people, your partners, your customer service, you engineers working on your product or on product fixes, people who make your web page, people who create your whole product– get it?

BMW measures satisfaction. However, no one in the eco-system that Patty encountered – the service guy, his manager, the sales guy, the person taking the survey – got what good customer service meant, or why they should practice it. By contrast, everyone at Zappos seems to get it.

It is not enough if you tell what you want people to do. Do you emphasize it? Do you value it? Do you notice and thank people when you see it? Do you make people feel good about it? Do you live it? If not, they probably don’t get it. And consequently, they don’t do it.